January 23

There’s been a sudden burst in articles about science and science news communication websites – and the comments left on such sites. Because of a number of heated exchanges in the comments over the past few weeks here at Retraction Watch — mostly in response to our coverage of the shutdown of the Science Fraud site — we’ve added this to our FAQ: In late 2011, in a nearly 6,000-word article in The New York Times Magazine, health writer Tara Parker-Pope laid out the scientific evidence that maintaining weight loss is a nearly impossible task—something that, in the words of one obesity scientist she quotes, only “rare individuals” can accomplish. George Church, 58, is a pioneer in synthetic biology, a field whose aim is to create synthetic DNA and organisms in the laboratory. They’re usually thought of as a brutish, primitive species. Where’s Fred Flintstone when you need him? In a controversial interview that has ignited commentary across the world, a respected Harvard professor of genetics has suggested an “extremely adventurous female human” might someday serve as surrogate mother for a cloned Neanderthal baby. A prominent genetics expert from Harvard Medical School wants to make one thing perfectly clear: He is NOT looking for a woman to bear a Neanderthal baby. The headline flying across the Internet yesterday seemed too outlandish to be true: A prominent genetics expert from Harvard Medical School wants to make one thing perfectly clear: He is not looking for a woman to bear a Neanderthal baby. A Harvard geneticist has raised eyebrows by declaring that scientists could make a Neanderthal clone baby if they had an “extremely adventurous female human” as a surrogate. As 21st century technology strains to become ever faster, cleaner and cheaper, an invention from more than 200 years ago keeps holding it back. Lithium-ion batteries became crucial to the design of Boeing Co.’s new Dreamliner jet because they offered a combination of high power and low weight. A scale model of a Reaper drone rumbled down the runway and lifted into the gray Canadian sky, powered by a plastic propeller and a lithium-ion battery. Two major safety incidents involving Boeing 787 Dreamliners have caused two Japanese airlines to ground their fleets of the aircraft. Talk about whisky on ice: Three bottles of rare, 19th century Scotch found beneath the floor boards of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackelton’s abandoned expedition base were returned to the polar continent Saturday after a distiller flew them to Scotland to recreate the long-lost recipe. Three bottles of rare 19th century Scotch whisky left behind by Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton have finally been returned to his desolate snowbound base. Two crates of Scotch whisky which belonged to the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton are to be recovered after a century buried in the Antarctic ice. A road tunnel in Norway has been closed – by a lorry-load of burning cheese. Minerals found underground on Mars are the “strongest evidence yet” that the planet may have supported life, according to new research.

"at my job we have the opposite problem.. .the “CEO got a new puppy” problem, in which every little transaction is considered to be newsworthy, and a lot of my job is spent explaining to leadership that..." Martha on I.76